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Scientists Debate Humanity’s Response to Possible Intelligent Life Beyond Earth
(universalrecord.org)
this post was submitted on 18 May 2026
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Technology
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Oil, or at least equivalents would be pretty easy to make from raw elements. It's just random chains and configurations of carbon with hydrogen, toss in some oxygen and nitrogen here and there with some other elements. Wood on the other hand is made from chains of This. It's so complex and tough that it took 70 million years for something to evolve that could break it down. We think of plastic as lasting forever, but there's already bacteria and fungi that can break it down, and it even breaks down in sunlight. So in comparison, after about 100 years, something evolved to break down plastic, but it took 700,000x as long for something to evolve to break down wood.